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Comment by holsta | Hacker News Reader

> [..] it’s a great one-line, easily memorable tool for cleaning up a PC quickly for an industrial use case without any security risks.

I deal with many OT/ICS vendors and they would all refuse to support their app on a Windows system modified in this manner. I think such an article should mention the -WhatIf option, so you get an idea of all the important things about to be removed.

    Get-AppxPackage | Remove-AppPackage -WhatIf

On my systems that includes VCLibs, .Net frameworks. I would not do this.

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I showed this to someone who works on Windows distribution in enterprise and who previously worked on core windows. Their response was a resounding "That's hilariously stupid".

For those who think "oh I can do this on windows 11 too", This has a high risk of blowing away your shell too, which is distributed now as an AppX, also Defender and its update runtime which are distributed via AppX/Store so you're risking destroying your whole machine.

From the winds of change that I've been hearing: Most of the OS is going to be distributed via AppX packages, which means that pretty quickly, doing this will leave you limping and hurt.

I don't dispute that, that's why I said Windows 10, not 11. Windows 11 is far more dependent on AppX than Windows 10 and the effects are far more harshly felt. Windows 10, having an EOL in 2025, is unlikely to change in that direction anytime soon.

I'd be interested in hearing what the issue on Windows 10 is, especially considering how it compares to Windows 10 LTSC which seems quite similar.

Edit: As for "That's hilariously stupid," I updated the article for my thoughts on that. Considering this is going to be used on a computer that cost me $150, has storage on a separate NAS, for a machine that could cause safety issues and a lot of money in wasted material if literally anything goes wrong (CNC router), running software that runs only on Windows and requires precise USB timing (no VM or Wine from Linux), I think it would be more stupid to not de-bloat for all the failure methods Windows has added. The last thing I need is Windows Game Bar (normally not removable) popping up over the CNC Control Window and blocking the Emergency Stop button. [If you think this sounds horrifying, brand new CNCs have software that still runs great on Windows XP, it's called Mach3 and it's arcane. Some features literally refuse to run on any 64-bit version of Windows and require a Parallel port, that kind of thing. This software is still sold in 2022 and still required for many machines.] For me, Windows bloat is actually a potential, even if unlikely, safety issue.

Stupid ideas sometimes become a lot less stupid when in context.

Edit 2: "Most of the OS is going to be distributed via AppX packages, which means that pretty quickly, doing this will leave you limping and hurt."

This is just my personal experience, but I had a Windows 10 computer (a desktop, no power issues here) brick itself from a botched Windows Update. Neither System Restore nor Windows Recovery could bring it back to life from the unstable mess it crashed in. The install was less than 2 years old. I've seen family laptops with unbelievable bugs which make me scratch my head and wonder how Windows got that messed up, even without installing new apps. My brother literally only uses the Microsoft Store, yet somehow managed to lose all thumbnails on files, and the Start button logo on the taskbar [nothing but an empty space where it should be]. I'm at the point where blindly trusting Microsoft updates feels "hilariously stupid" for anything that requires stability as well... which is an awkward position. Darned if you do, darned if you don't. (For the record I do install updates, but I hold my breath on whether they'll work... and make backups.)

But what if you intend to mostly run win32 apps?

You mean the extremely dumbed down Windows 11 shell with huge everything? Good riddance. I'd like a command to run on my VM to get rid of this atrocity specifically, actually.

> On my systems that includes VCLibs, .Net frameworks. I would not do this.

Edit: There was a long paragraph here, but I've decided to simplify. The AppX .NET Framework, AppX .NET Native, and VCLibs are all UWP support packages and Win32-inside-Microsoft-Store support packages. If you run this script, fully knowing that the Microsoft Store is being removed, you won't have any packages that need them, and their loss is almost certainly irrelevant.

That's a lot of "primarily", "most", "a very good chance", "if you have no"... :P

So I get your point, but it also sounds awfully optimistic... ;)

(I see you got downvoted, but it wasn't me.)

I keep saying primarily because I haven't actually run into any Win32 applications, even large ones (Fusion 360, FreeCAD, Steam), that don't run without them, which is a good sign. I keep saying that as a disclaimer just in case, because I don't want to be on the record saying "it won't" even if it has never happened thus far. So... that's why I recommend VM first. That's why it's important to keep in mind what VCLibs and .NET Native are for, which is UWP and Microsoft Store apps, not Win32 ones, which makes sense for why they wouldn't be affected.

You are speaking properly and I would say the command is quite useful and awesome. Thank you!

You aren't presenting it as something everyone should do to clean up their relatives crufty loaded up pc's while visiting for holidays.

It is what it is and it's quite cool and useful for what it's useful for.

The VCLibs stuff is still available as standalone downloads: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-support...

Mark my words: Microsoft Store will end up on this list https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-micros... so disabling it is like living in the future.

Considering they are betting their future on this, that seems a stretch.

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